Why review a book?

I have found an increasingly frustrating aspect of me that means half the things I'd like to get down on paper don't end up anywhere useful. My mind thinks. It thinks a lot. At any one time I may have as many as 5 different concepts all trying to work themselves out of me. I theorise about ideas, world views, Jesus, people, psycho-analyse myself, and there is general chit chat in the midst meaning, during conversation, I will make a remark that seems completely unrelated that I will try and draw back to the original point but the responder simply takes hold of new subject matter and sees a shift in direction, rather than a slightly bigger picture.

I'm also struggling with sentence length.

This week my thought processes have been fairly narrow, primarily consisting of the theories of interpretation of Revelation (the final book of the Bible), what Jesus' mission was at a cultural 1st century level (which I may try and show does link back to Revelation, but wouldn't appear to), how to correctly represent the ideas of a video for the church website, and what Christianity really is all about and the need of the 'Born Again' prefix for clarification in this day and age. Oh yeah, and Christian culture.

All that in one week.

Last week I was preoccupied with the transfer of sin and righteousness with relation to Jesus' death. I thought I'd come to a definite conclusion then read another couple of opinions and realised the mistakes we make. There are draft of three posts I was going to publish, but wasn't overly confident in material so I left them. I'm not sure, yet, what to do with them. That is what predominated, at least. I don't remember what else was going on but I guess there were some odd conversations in retrospect.

I remember having a conversation which was trundling along at a steady pace, talking about food or something, and then I asked if they'd watched any '24.' This, rather than opening up some more of the subject, took the whole conversation down a different path, and, perhaps with extra observation over knowing my own mind, must have seemed somewhat strange. I also know from experience I use commas far too much.

I think, now, comma comma, I'd like to open up a little into Jesus. I wonder; what did His death and resurrection look like to the first century Jews, living in a Roman Empire?

More appropriately, I'm basically going to summarise my thoughts on a book I've just finished (Everything Must Change by Brian D McLaren). It's opened up some kind of ideological world view that is actually pretty accomplishable. Not because I'm so great, or you're so great; that's kind of redundant and, to be perfectly honest, not true. It's because God is great that these things are possible.

So Jesus looks like, either, this guy born somewhere small disrupted a bit of Jewish life, left rather abruptly after dying and rising again, never having made a political party, made loads of money, he died penniless, homeless, and rejected by his whole country. Not really that much of a big deal. Or he looks like this amazing character from history who turned millions, if not, billions of lives, upside down. He changed the course of history, fulfilled prophecy after prophecy, did many miraculous things, represented fully God on earth, was God, died to fulfill the law, rose to prove his accomplishments, went to heaven, and is now watching over His church with expectancy, waiting. Waiting until He can come back and be with all His followers in person.

These are two quite different pictures.

No one has ever tried putting the two together. It's always been one or the other for me. Historians of no affiliation to anything special have shown the world Jesus lived in, and what kind of person he was; a homeless teacher with less followers than Hitlers fan club, with a tragic end to a less than effective struggle. Theologians have shown him to be a great man, doing many wonderful things, preaching a glorious message, accomplishing what only God could accomplish (because He is God in Flesh), and He is someone worth getting to know now, before you see Him at the Judgment.

Who do you think most people saw, while He was alive?

Who is He really? Has He fooled us all?

Obviously my point is that He hasn't, but do you see the vast difference?

It turns out, actually, that His presence on the earth is as mind shattering in physical terms as the theologians rave about in the spiritual terms. Jesus' message was one of those kinds of messages that completely changes the way you think. A little like finding out Santa doesn't exist (although he still does for those naive lot out there), or working out that babies do actually come from one stork; which is why there are so many single mums out there. The fact is, Jesus wasn't trying to stay alive for 30 years, preaching stuff to upset everyone so He could be killed and fulfill some prophecy about Him, so all the Jews would realise who He was and that be done with. Jesus shows how all of Israel as a people were living a misled life, because He used the same scriptures they did and He lived an entirely different life. Why? He allowed the Old Testament to shape his world view; the lens to view life from. He didn't come at the inspired words of God from one world view trying to make them make sense, He tried to make the world make sense after experiencing scripture.

His whole message was from a different world view that should change how the world appears. The best way to put this is, as much as the cultures had different uses of language, making Jesus' words hard to decipher, at the brunt of it all was a man preaching into a self-destructive society that suffered as much in it's day, as we do in ours, over drug abuse, alcohol abuse, sexuality abuse and confusion, sickness, death, corruption, war, famine, and so much more that is all caused, and a bi-product of their and our living, not something else we have to deal with on the side.

More to come; but the point is, His physical goings on 2000 years ago caused almost as much havoc (which almost makes no sense, having an eternal effect, but not quite), as His eternal spiritual goings on did somewhere in the kingdom of God.